Pax
Given `<p>Bananas <em>in</em> pyjamas are <em>going</em> down the <em>stairs</em>.</p>`
How can I get the HTML string inside the `<p>` tag?
That is, `Bananas <em>in</em> pyjamas are <em>going</em> down the <em>stairs</em>.`
```
paragraph = '<p>Bananas <em>in</em> pyjamas are <em>going</em> down the <em>stairs</em>.</p>'
paragraphTag = BeautifulSoup(paragraph, "html.parser")
# paragraphTag.???
```
Top Answer
Pax
It seems like there is no direct way to retrieve the string inside a tag.
`.text` and `.strings` will strip the tags.
`.contents` is our best bet but you have to cast to a string first.
```
return "".join(map(str, paragraphTag.contents))
```
Answer #2
hkotsubo
The `BeautifulSoup` constructor creates an object that represents the whole HTML document. Of course in this case, the document contains only one `p` tag, but anyway, your solution also outputs the `<p>` and `</p>` tags, which is not what you wanted (if I understood correctly).
To get only the tag contents (but not the opening and closing tags themselves), you should use `find` to get only the tag, and then use `decode_contents()` to get all tag contents as a string:
```python
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
paragraph = '''<p>Bananas <em>in</em> pyjamas are <em>going</em> down the <em>stairs</em>.</p>'''
# get a "soup" object that represents the whole HTML document
soup = BeautifulSoup(paragraph, "html.parser")
# get only the p tag
paragraphTag = soup.find('p')
# get tag contents as a string
print(paragraphTag.decode_contents()) # Bananas <em>in</em> pyjamas are <em>going</em> down the <em>stairs</em>.
```